Herman Webster Mudgett: The Man Behind H.H. Holmes
Hello again! Our first episode, Herman Webster Mudgett: The Man Behind H.H. Holmes has recently made its debut. True crime podcasts are becoming quite a popular thing right now. In fact, it seems that they're one of the top resources for true crime buffs. However, Rachel and I realize that not everybody is capable of enjoying podcasts. In an effort to make true crime accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, we've decided to post our show notes on this blog. Please note: this isn't a verbatim account of what we say in the podcast. This is the script that we work off of when recording. This was our first episode, so we're still trying to figure out what format to work from. In the future, our notes may possibly take more of a list type format. If that is the case, I will make some edits before posting, in order to make it understandable and easy to enjoy. In the meantime, enjoy our work on H.H. Holmes!
“Yes, I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to song, nor the ambition of an intellectual man to be great. I was born with the evil one standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been by my side ever since.” The North American April 10, 1896.
This is the case of Herman Webster Mudgett, alias H.H. Holmes and we are, Yours in Murder.
Just a reminder: this is a true crime podcast. We do not aim to be graphic, but we do discuss some horrific crimes and occasionally use foul language. We do not recommend this podcast for young children.
So today we’ll be talking about a case that both of us has been fascinated with for years, and since it’s from Illinois it’s a local case for us. It’s a fascinating time period too. At the end of the 19th century new innovations were pouring into Chicago because of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair.
First some quick shout outs: Shout out to Jackie Hodgkins, Brian Rehor and Megan Nolin for guessing our episode from the clues we posted. And that’s it for shout outs. On to murder. In the case of H.H. Holmes, fact and fantasy tend to blend together a lot. Part of this is because the events took place over 100 years ago, so careful record keeping and in-depth forensics weren’t really part of the investigation. Also, the crime scene in the basement of Holmes’s building was basically open to the public, so evidence could easily have been destroyed accidentally, or purposefully.
Newspapers at the time realized early on how well information on this case sold papers, so when they didn’t have new evidence or developments to run on the front page, they printed speculations and theories. Sometimes they used the theories that the police were working with, like when the New York times printed a list of who the police believed to be victims. Most people don’t read newspaper articles thoroughly and would skim the list and assume that someone was a victim, when in fact they were alive and well in another part of the country.
In his new book “H.H. Holmes: The true history of the white city devil” Adam Selzer does an excellent job separating media speculation from fact. He sifted through tons of newspaper articles on microfilm and official public documents. As I don’t have ready access to a lot of that, I had to take his word for it and use his book as one of the main sources for my research, in addition to the newspaper articles and records I can find online.
In this episode, we’re going to take a two-fold look at Holmes’s story. We’re going to start with the Holmes of legend, the Holmes that you’re probably familiar with, and walk through his story as it’s remembered in the public imagination.
Then, we’ll take a step back and look at which crimes we can prove, which are likely, and which are probably pure fabrication and try to uncover the true story of the man we know as H.H. Holmes.
H H Holmes was born Herman Webster Mudgett in 1861. His parents were strict and religious. As a boy, the woods near his house were often found littered with the small bodies of animals he had killed. At 10, he was dragged by older boys into a doctor’s office. . . and made to face a skeleton. This simple prank would have an impact none of the boys would foresee. . .
Herman married young and had a son. Shortly after, Herman began to study medicine, a much less regulated profession in those days. He and his colleagues would find themselves in need of money and concoct a plan to use cadavers to commit life insurance fraud. Eventually Herman and Clara would go their separate ways as he graduated medical school, never bothering to divorce.
From medical school, he took a job in a pharmacy in Philadelphia. However, a child died after taking medication he had prepared. Herman decided that now would be a great time to leave and change his name to Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. There was also the matter of insurance fraud he was suspected of….
Holmes moved to the Midwest and married his second wife, Myrta in 1887 Myrta had no idea her husband was already married and they had a daughter together. She moved back in with her parents when their daughter was born, but Holmes always seemed in her good graces… wooing her with gifts and compliments. This would be evidence of his charms and way with women that got him so far. Holmes would arrive in Englewood, a suburb of Chicago a few years before the fair. He would come across a pharmacy and charm the little old lady running it for her dying husband. Her husband would pass, Holmes would buy the pharmacy and the little old lady would be said to relocate to California… without ever telling her neighbors.
The handsome and charming young doctor built his pharmacy business and began to set his sights higher… Holmes purchased the land across the street from the pharmacy and began to design a building. He employed all the workers himself, not trusting a contractor. The lower floor would be shops while the upper floor would be apartments. Many workers would be employed for the building but Holmes would fire them quickly or refuse to pay them. Most of the building was bought on credit as the con man built his castle without paying for it and no one but himself knew the whole plan. One room was lined with asbestos and had flame jets… several others had gas valves. There were trapdoors and secret staircases, as well as an airtight vault. But the true horror was in the basement of the building, where Holmes kept his dissection table, vats of acid and implements of torture.
Holmes immediately began to staff his new castle and found his loyal henchmen in many of his later swindles, Benjamin Pitezel . He began taking in boarders. When the World’s fair was announced, he added a floor to his castle to be a world’s fair hotel.
Holmes had a knack for finding young pretty women to work for him in his new shop. One such lady was Julia, who came with her husband and her daughter Pearl. Julia’s husband would eventually file for divorce and leave her, jealous of the attention Holmes paid to her and suspecting them of an affair. Whether the affair started before the divorce, in December of 1891 Julia told Holmes she was pregnant. He agreed to marry her, under the condition she would have an abortion. He would even perform it for her, no use starting out their married life with an illegitimate child. She agreed. No one ever saw Julia or Pearl again. Holmes began to rent rooms to those coming to Chicago. Young men were often told there were no vacancies but for the young women, on their own for the first time… there was room…
Early the next year, as the city of Chicago began to work itself into a frenzy over the upcoming fair, a young woman named Emmeline Cigrande began to work for Holmes. He lavished attention on her as well. He bought her a bicycle, the newest fad at the time, and took rides to Jackson Park to see how the fair was being built. Emmeline wrote often to her family and seemed smitten with Holmes until shortly before Christmas that year, when she told a neighbor she was headed home for Christmas and wasn’t sure if she would be returning. However, her family began to make inquiries when she didn’t make it back to Indiana… To the family and neighbors, Holmes showed a wedding announcement…. Claiming she eloped with a young man she met, only telling him. She was never seen again. . . also rumored to have left without a trace were a waitress at the restaurant in the building… a young man renting an apartment… a store clerk… all last seen at the castle.
While traveling for business in Boston, under the alias Henry Gordon, Holmes would meet his next paramour, a young heiress named Minnie Williams. They would court by letters until Holmes suddenly went absent. This would break Minnie’s heart. She moved to Chicago with the tide of people coming for the fair and wrote Holmes, who she called Harry. He immediately called on her and begged her to work for him, so he could see her more. She would eventually have her own apartment in the castle, as Holmes moved their courtship with his charming and too quick style. Minnie wrote to her sister, Nannie, saying she and Harry were to marry. Holmes told her that he had a plan that would insure all the grand plans they had for their life together would be funded. She just needed to sign over the land she had inherited to a Mr. Bond and then he’d sign it to Mr. Lyman. Bond was of course an alias for Holmes and Lyman was his associate Pitezel. With this, Holmes now owned her inheritance, but Minnie didn’t know this, or that he had two other wives. They were married quickly with just them and a preacher, but Cook County IL has no record of their union.
Shortly after their marriage, Minnie’s sister Anna came to stay in an apartment Holmes had rented in the North side of the city, saying he wanted to get Minnie out of the dark castle. Holmes or “Harry” would take the ladies to the fair and invited Anna on the promised trip to Europe. She giddily wrote home for more clothes for the journey. Later that month, Holmes would hire a man to take a crate and a box of about … coffin… dimensions away…. And mysteriously, Holmes stopped renting the north side apartment and neither of the sisters were seen again.
Soon, however, Holmes swindles began to crumble. A group of the creditors he had put off were now banding together with an attorney. When they came to confront him, he confessed he’d lost it all in the panic of 1893 and would they take his castle as repayment? The creditors retired to discuss… and Holmes fled town.
Holmes headed to Fort Worth, TX to attempt to claim the land he was left by Minnie. He took Pitezel with him as well as picking up another new girlfriend along the way. He eventually made his way to St. Louis where he would be arrested for fraud. (He lost his touch) While in jail, he boasted to another inmate that he had a foolproof scheme to fake Pitetzel’s death for insurance money, but needed a shady lawyer to help. If this inmate could recommend one, Holmes would pay him for it.
After Holmes was released on bail, he and Pitezel headed for Philly. Sadly, there the scheme would take a turn, with Holmes really killing Pitetzel and claiming the insurance money on him. After this, Holmes would take three of Pitezel’s children across the country with him, firstly to id the body of their father, then to “Visit him” in hiding (His wife wasn’t in on the “her husband was really dead” part). Eventually, all three children would end up dead These last crimes would be Holmes’s undoing… he left too much evidence. He would be tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. Holmes was executed on May 7, 1896. He remained calm until the end, however asked for his coffin to be buried in cement. His neck didn’t snap and instead he slowly died of strangulation. But the story of HH Holmes doesn’t end there. Over the next few years, those connected with the case began to die. Was there a curse? Had Holmes come back to cheat death?
The true story of H.H. Holmes begins on May 16, 1861 when he was born with the name Herman Webster Mudgett in the small town of Gilmanton, New Hampshire. By most accounts (his own included), Holmes had a fairly average childhood. His parents, Levi and Theodate Mudgett, were strict, but loving, and his neighbors had few complaints about the boy. The one thing that many of his neighbors would go on to say was that Holmes had a dishonest look about him and he wouldn’t look people in the eye. As it turns out, Holmes was cross eyed. You can see in photographs of him that his left eye points in toward his nose, so it would actually be very difficult for him to look people in the eye.
This is the point where some sources suggest that Holmes, like many serial killers, spent his childhood torturing and killing small animals.
I personally find this highly unlikely as there isn’t any evidence, not even stories from neighbors. Also, when newspapers started reporting on Holmes’s crimes, his father, Levi was quoted as saying “Why, Herman was always too timid to even drown a kitten!” That tells me that he probably didn’t have a history, or at least a known history, of animal abuse.
Herman, aka Holmes, married Clara Loverling on July 4, 1878, when they were both 17 years old. For a while Holmes worked in Clara’s Uncle’s grocery store. During this time their son, Robert Mudgett, was born. After some time, Holmes quit work at the grocery and went back to Gilmanton to study medicine with the local physician, Dr. Wright. Holmes then went on to study at the University of Vermont in Burlington. While in Burlington, Holmes seems to have thrown himself wholeheartedly into his course of study. His landlady, Mrs. Brew, recalls him bringing home chemicals and test tubes to set up a chemistry lab in his rented room. (How does he get away with this when I can’t??) She also remarked that he also frequently spoke about dissection and seemed extremely excited about it. The event that she recalls most vividly is when Holmes’s roommate walked downstairs, claiming that he hadn’t slept a wink all night. Later, while cleaning the men’s’ room, she discovered why. As she swept under the bed, her broom collided with an object. She used the broom to move the object out into the open, and found a dead baby. Apparently, the body had come into the medical school and Holmes brought it home with him to dissect. Unfortunately for Holmes, but luckily for Mrs. Brew, his money ran out after only one year at Burlington. So, he returned to Gilmanton and took a teaching job.
By all accounts, Holmes wasn’t a particularly good teacher. Many students and their parents saw him as overly strict, even by the standards of the time. Additionally, the school board thought he had trouble keeping order in the classroom. However, one story goes beyond these somewhat commonplace complaints. The story goes that Holmes was assisting the local doctor one evening when he had to partially amputate a man’s frostbitten foot. Holmes saw an opportunity for an interactive lesson and brought the foot to school the next day for the students to study its anatomy. This story didn’t make it into the papers until after Holmes was arrested in 1895, and therefore is likely untrue. The superintendent of the school Holmes was working at even stated that it was outright fabricated. Whether or not he actually brought a frozen foot into a classroom full of children, it remains true that Holmes’s teaching career lasted only one year. After that year, Holmes, Clara, and baby Robert all relocated to Ann Arbor so that Holmes could attend medical school at the University of Michigan. While there, Holmes’s academic career wasn’t exactly stellar. One professor described him as a below average student and many of his classmates remember him having a rather creepy obsession with dissection.
He later got a job assisting a professor with dissections and one student recalled that he believes Holmes had his own key to the lab. Holmes himself stated that it was during this time that he came up with the idea for the insurance schemes he would use in later years. He realized that as a medical professional he would be able to obtain bodies, disfigure the face to make it unidentifiable, and then collect money by claiming it was somebody that he had taken out a life insurance plan on. Holmes’s marriage wasn’t doing so well at this time. He, Clara, and Robert were living in a boarding house at the time and other boarders often reported that they could hear the two fighting. More than once people saw Clara with one, or both eyes blackened. Divorce was still taboo at the time, but enough was enough. While Holmes was in his final year of medical school, Clara packed up and moved back to New Hampshire with little Robert. She said, “I returned to New Hampshire the spring before he was to graduate, and I have known little of him since.”
After graduating from college, Holmes made his first appearance in Chicago in the spring of 1886. He found out that he needed a license to be a practicing pharmacist in Illinois. On July 15, 1886, the candidates who successfully passed the pharmacist exams in Springfield were announced. On the list was Mr. Henry Howard Holmes. This is the first time the alias would appear, and Holmes would continue to use it for the rest of his life. Just as the stories go, Holmes then made his way up toward Chicago and landed in Englewood on the South Side. There he did work in a drug store owned by a Dr. Holton, before buying the store himself. However, in most stories Holmes meets an elderly Dr. and Mrs. Holton. The doctor mysteriously dies and the Mrs. moves west, never to be heard from again. In fact, the Holtons are often considered Holmes’s first victims. To put it simply, that is just plain wrong. The Medical and Surgical Directory of the United States from 1886 tells us that Holmes wouldn’t have met an elderly doctor and his wife. Instead, he would have met Dr. Elizabeth Sarah Holton and her husband, both of whom were far from elderly. The Holtons also didn’t die after selling Holmes the drug store. They and their two children were still living in Englewood when he was arrested in 1895.
Shortly after moving to Chicago, Holmes married Myrta Belknap on January 28, 1887. Myrta was a young lady whom he had met in Minneapolis, who only knew him as Holmes, not Mudgett. Holmes was still married to Clara at the time, man was a playa, but he did file for divorce shortly after the wedding. However, the proceedings never really went anywhere and despite what Myrta thought, their marriage was not recognized as legal. Shortly after their marriage Holmes purchased a block of land across from the pharmacy. This block on 63rd street is where he built what would eventually be known as “the murder castle.” The legend is true that Holmes had a talent for not paying for things he purchased. The castle itself was built with loaned money. Its furnishings were bought on credit. When creditors would come to repossess the goods that Holmes never paid for, they couldn’t find them in the weird setup of rooms. He had a large vault installed on the second floor before the building was complete. When the creditors came to take it back he said “Okay, but you better not damage the building.” They found that it was impossible to move the vault without taking out any walls, so they had to leave it.
He did have construction workers complete part of the building and fire them, not because he didn’t want anybody to know the layout, but because he didn’t want to pay them. The building itself, while creepy and ugly, wasn’t quite the maze and death trap that history makes it seem. The original building was only two stories, the third being added later. The first floor was all retail space, kind of like a late 19th century strip mall. It housed a drugstore, a restaurant, a jeweler, and many more small businesses. The second story was apartments, one of which Holmes lived in himself.
After his arrest in 1895, rumors circulated about this strange building. Some of the most common claims were that he had secret rooms, that he could pump noxious gas into any room he pleased, suffocating his victim, and that he had vats of acid in his basement for disposing of his victims. However, none of those fun amenities, which would totally spice up a Zillow listing, existed. They were just made up by the papers. Employees of the retail space and residents of the upper apartments, all who knew the building well claimed that the only “secret room” was the one behind the drug store, where the clerks slept after long shifts. The jeweler, who claimed to know every inch of the building, debunked the claims about gas, stating that there was no way to pump gas into the rooms. In fact, most rooms weren’t even outfitted for gas as the building was wired for electricity. As for tanks of acid, the police dug up and thoroughly searched the basement. The only tanks found were for gasoline, which Holmes used in one of his early money-making schemes, glass bending. However, during the construction of the castle, Holmes did meet Benjamin Pitezel, who became an accomplice in many of Holmes’s schemes. Little did each man know that the other would be his eventual downfall.
Once the building was complete, Holmes began renting out the upstairs apartments and leasing the retail space on the first floor. He continued buying things on credit and not paying for them, and he also continued running the drug store. In the meantime, Myrta became pregnant with what would be her first child Holmes’s second. Due to her pregnancy, he convinced her to stop working at the drugstore and do clerical work upstairs instead. The real reason for that wasn’t because he was worried for her health, but because he wanted to flirt with female customers and having his wife in the store made that difficult. He even installed a bell so he would know when Myrta was coming downstairs and behave accordingly.
In 1890, Holmes hired a new employee, Ned Conner, who ran the jewelry counter at his drug store. Conner also rented an apartment in the castle and lived there with his wife, Julia and their young daughter, Pearl. Tensions began to rise between Ned and Julia, mainly because the latter seemed smitten with Holmes. Holmes offered Julia a position as a cashier in the drugstore, but even having husband and wife working together didn’t help. While both Holmes and Julia were still living with their spouses, the two started an affair. Ned caught on pretty quickly. He quit his job, moved out, and began divorce proceedings against Julia. Myrta Holmes, on the other hand, continued to live in the same building as her husband’s mistress for over a year before Holmes moved his family to an apartment building, not far from the castle.
Julia’s infatuation with Holmes was most likely fatal, not only for herself, but for her daughter as well. On Christmas Eve 1891, Julia and Pearl Conner visited their neighbors, the Crowes and decorated a Christmas tree in their apartment. According to Mrs. Crowe, Julia spoke of what they would do on Christmas day and gave no indication that she intended to leave that night. That was the last time that Julia and Pearl Conner were seen alive. In his confessions, Holmes changed his story more than once. At one time, he claimed that he did not kill Julia and Pearl. Another time he claimed that Julia died while he was performing an abortion. Still another time he claimed that he killed them with chloroform. The last is the most likely. While it cannot be proven beyond a doubt that Holmes killed Julia and Pearl Conner, it is generally accepted as the truth. When police were digging in the basement of the castle they uncovered the bodies of a woman and a girl who was probably between the ages of 6 and 10, the same age as Pearl when she disappeared. Modern forensics would likely be able to determine the identity of the bodies for certain. However, science at the time only allowed investigators to say that they were most likely the bodies of the Conners.
Around this time, Myrta moved back in with her parents in Wilmette, IL and took Lucy with her. Holmes occasionally visited the pair, and on those visits played the part of the doting husband and father. Yet, in Chicago he already had a new conquest, Emeline Cigrande.
Emeline arrived in Chicago in spring of 1892, looking for work. She met Holmes through an employment agency and began working at the castle. However, she never actually lived there as many of his other victims did. Instead, she roomed at different boarding houses, never staying more than a week, apparently on Holmes’s orders. It became obvious many that Emeline wasn’t only Holmes’s secretary. Although she only ever stayed at the castle overnight when Holmes was away, the two spent a great deal of time together, going to restaurants and riding bicycles throughout the neighborhood.
Emeline’s second cousin reached out to her because he was working on a family genealogy. She invited him to the castle, gave him a tour and told him all about her impending marriage to a Mr. Phelps. Emeline had been preparing for a marriage, even having another resident sew her a wedding dress. She said that she was going back home to get married at her parents’ house, but her courtship with Holmes continued. On December 6, 1892, Emeline visited one of her friends who lived in the castle, Mrs. Lawrence. She gave her painted plate as a present, saying that she wouldn’t be around on Christmas because she was going to visit her parents in Lafayette, Indiana. After not seeing her for several days after the meeting, her friend’s husband, Dr. Lawrence, asked Holmes where she went. Holmes replied that she had left to get married. The next day, Holmes and two other men moved a very heavy trunk down the stairs and outside. Holmes then left for Wilmette for a few days and when he returned he showed the Lawerences a very simple wedding announcement which stated that Emeline Cigrande had married a man named Robert Phelps. Her family members received the same announcements. They were confused as they had not heard of her plans to marry, nor had she arrived home for Christmas. A wedding announcement was also printed in a Lafayette newspaper, presumably by Holmes. It began, “The bride, after completing her education, was employed as a stenographer in the County Recorder’s office. From there, she went to Dwight, and there to Chicago where she met her fate.” Most people reading the announcement would assume that “met her fate” was just a strange way to say, “met her husband.” However, with the advantage of hindsight we can sense the irony in Holmes’s words. Emeline Cigrande’s body was never found, so it cannot be totally disproven that she eloped with a man named Robert Phelps. Yet, she had a fling with Holmes during the time that she was supposedly engaged to Phelps. She never made it home for Christmas, and she only briefly mentioned Phelps to friends and never to her parents. These details lead most people to believe that Robert Phelps was just another alias of Holmes, and that he murdered her and carried her body out of the castle in the large trunk that he and the other men were seen carrying out. During Emeline’s time with Holmes, his building was undergoing renovations to add a third floor, which he claimed was to be used as a hotel for people visiting the Columbian Exposition, otherwise known as the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Contrary to the legend surrounding Holmes, he didn’t build the entire building on 63rd street in response to the World’s Fair. He began construction on it long before the fair was even announced. However, his building was very close to Jackson Park, where the fair was held, so he had the third floor added. Holmes likely never actually intended the building to act as a hotel. There have been no records of any World’s Fair patrons ever staying there. It was much more likely that he used the fair as an opportunity to commit more fraud. As the new floor was added he continued his practice of hiring and firing workmen without paying them and his habit of buying things on credit and hiding them when they were to be repossessed. Now another character enters the Holmes saga: Minnie Williams, a Texas heiress. Minnie’s parents died when she was about 10 years old. She and her sister, Nannie, were separated and raised by different relatives. Minnie was raised by her Uncle, from whom she got her inheritance, a property in Fort Worth, TX. After graduating from school and working as an actress for a while, Minnie moved to Chicago. It’s not certain exactly when she met Holmes. She may have met him as early as 1889, but when she moved to the city she lived on the opposite side of town from him, so she may have met him in Chicago. Unlike most of his other victims, Minnie seemed to be knowingly involved in Holmes’s schemes, at least to some extent. She was a smart woman, and may have seen Holmes as a means for easy money, just as he saw her. On paper, she owned the house that he built for Myrta and his daughter Lucy in Wilmette. However, she probably didn’t know that her “husband” was already married. What is known is that in the spring of 1893, Nannie began receiving letters from Minnie telling her about her engagement and then marriage to a man named Harry Gordon, another alias of Holmes’s. In June Nannie joined Minnie and Holmes in Chicago. The plan was for the three of them to see the World’s Fair and then take a trip around Europe.
On July 4, 1893 Nannie Williams wrote a letter to her aunt about their plans for the upcoming trip to Europe. On the same day Nannie went to the fair with Holmes and then went on a walk with her neighbor. She was never seen after that day. Minnie Williams was seen for the last time on the following day, July 5th. The case of the Williams sisters is similar to that of Emeline Cigrande. It can’t be definitively proven that Holmes murdered them, but the circumstantial evidence sure is damning. Shortly after the disappearance of Minnie and Nannie Williams, a fire broke out on the third floor of Holmes’s building. The fire was probably his entire plan for the addition from the beginning and the “hotel” just a ruse for insurance money. The only remaining photos of Holmes’s famous building during his life is from after this fire. In the photo you can see the temporary roof above the third floor. No photo remains of the building in its original state. Holmes had claims with several insurance companies, but keeping up convincing lies with all of them was just too much, even for an experienced con-man like Holmes, so he left Chicago and went West.
His first stop was Denver, where he married Georgiana Yoke, an Indiana school teacher he had been courting while still in Chicago. The name he put on the marriage certificate was Henry Howard. After claiming insurance money from Minnie William’s late brother in Colorado, the pair continued on to Fort Worth, Texas, where they met up with Holmes’s accomplice Benjamin Pitezel. Holmes and Pitezel used fake names and Minnie William’s property to build another building, similar to the one on 63rd street in Chicago. Newspapers would eventually call this building the “Texas Castle.” However, Holmes got in trouble in Texas for stealing horses and was once again on the run. The law eventually caught up with him and he was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri. While in prison, Holmes met a train robber named Marion Hedgepath and confided his latest scheme. He would take out an insurance policy on Pitezel. Then the two would obtain a body, disfigure it, make it look as though the person died in an accident, claim it was Pitezel, and then claim the money. (Things are about to get a bit complex here, stay with us)
After Holmes was released from prison he and Pitezel headed to Philadelphia to put their scheme into action. However, it didn’t quite pan out how they thought, or at least not like Pitezel thought it would. Holmes had arranged a meeting with Pitezel and offered him a drink. It would have been fairly easy to get Pitezel, an alcoholic, to drink until he passed out. Then, Holmes used chloroform to cut off his oxygen supply until he suffocated. In order to disfigure the body, Holmes doused it in benzene and set it on fire. This was the only crime he left behind a great deal of forensic evidence, and it would come back to haunt him. Holmes explained the insurance scheme to Mrs. Pitezel, of course leaving out the part where he ACTUALLY killed her husband, and convinced her to let him take her second oldest daughter, 14 year old Alice, to identify the body so that they could get the insurance money. Alice did so, and then Holmes continued traveling around the country with her, eventually convincing Mrs. Pitezel to let two of her other children, Nellie and Howard, to join them. What followed was months of Holmes moving the 3 children about the country, while also moving their mother and remaining two siblings. He moved the entire Pitezel family about, telling the children that they would soon be united with their mother, and telling Mrs. Pitezel that she would soon see her children and husband, who he claimed was alive and well. All the while Holmes kept them apart and kept their letters from each other. In one haunting letter that Alice wrote to her mother she said “Howard is not with us anymore.” Alice didn’t know it, but the reason that Howard was no longer with them was because Holmes murdered him in Indianapolis, dismembered him, and burned what remained of his body in a stove. In Toronto, Alice and Nellie met their untimely ends. Exactly how is not known, but most likely is that Holmes poisoned them with gas.
As he made his way back into the United States and moved about New England, he was followed by Pinkerton detectives trying to make a case against him on behalf of Fidelity Mutual, the insurance company he had swindled. He was finally arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894. Mrs. Pitezel was likewise arrested, as authorities thought she might have been in on the scheme. She told her story and begged the detectives to find her children. Although she was held for quite some time longer, Detective Frank Geyer took the case and began tracing Holmes’s steps to find the children. Sadly, he was too late. He found Howard’s bones inside a large stove in an Indianapolis home and Nellie and Alice buried in a basement in Toronto. Holmes’s arrest changed from insurance fraud to something far more serious. He was charged with the murder that the authorities had the most proof of: Benjamin Pitezel.
Meanwhile, newspapers all over the country were in a frenzy. What had started as an interesting insurance fraud case had turned into a hunt for missing children and eventually a murder trial. The Holmes case was a front page story every day, and when they didn’t have something to print, they made it up. Speculation ran wild, especially after the police began excavating the basement of Holmes’ 63rd street building. Every person who hadn’t been seen in awhile was reported as the latest Holmes victim and everyone who ever knew him suddenly remembered an incident in which they narrowly escaped being one of his victims. The media circus surrounding the case is the main reason that so many parts of Holmes’s story are taken for fact, when they’re really made up. Contemporary newspapers wrote sensationalist articles which over the course of time were taken as the truth. Holmes himself didn’t help us get the facts straight. He wrote more than one wordy confession from prison, presumably because he had nothing better to do. In one account he confessed to 27 murders. Yet, we know that Holmes was a liar, and some incidents in his confession are obviously fake. So, it’s difficult to tell which murders he wrote about were true, and which he just made up for shits and giggles.
Despite his ability to evade the law for most of his life, Holmes was found guilty of the murder of Benjamin Pitezel. He was hanged on May 7, 1896. A rather humble end for the first serial killer to fascinate and terrorize the American public. However, Holmes’s legacy didn’t die with him. Over 100 years after his death we continue to be enthralled by his cunning and despicable acts.
So Holmes continues to be a popular figure in pop culture. The book, Devil in the White City, helped make him a legend. I got to see the author speak and if you have a chance, I highly recommend it. He is a very funny man. While the information on Holmes is more of the newspaper based legends of him, he gives an amazing account of the building of the World’s Fair. The book is supposed to be soon made into a movie with Leonard DiCaprio as Holmes.
Holmes also retains current status as a major pop culture legend in Chicago, a city built on larger than life characters and stories. Even with it being mostly a legend, Chicago won’t let it go. See: Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and that damn goat. There are H H Holmes tours… which we may try to see next time we are in Chicago. We will report back.
Holmes also appeared on Supernatural, which is only our very favorite TV show. His ghost haunted a Philadelphia location in the season 2 episode, NO EXIT, continuing to kill young women. Which leads us to...
Not only does the story of H.H. Holmes refuse to die, but according to some people, the man did as well. Although there’s no evidence to suggest it, some believe that Holmes pulled one final con and escaped the hangman’s noose. They believe that the man hanged wasn’t actually Holmes. To put the rumors to rest once and for all, Holmes’s great grandchildren (descended through his son Robert) have asked to exhume his body. In May of 2017 a court order allowed for exhumation and forensic testing. Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania will take DNA samples from the remains and compare it to his descendants’ DNA, in order to prove that it is Holmes’s body… or maybe find out otherwise. Either way, testing should take a while as Holmes requested that he be buried in concrete. He was horrified at the thought that somebody might desecrate his body, which is the epitome of the pot calling the kettle black. Anyway, we will keep you updated as the results are published.
So anyway, we will see you next time. You can find us on Facebook as Yours in Murder or email us at: Yours in Murder Pod AT Gmail DOT com. We would love to hear from you. And, if any of you have acquired large fortunes by not paying your builders or stealing cadavers, you can donate to the podcast on PayPal. Send to Yours in Murder Pod AT Gmail DOT com.
In the meantime, we are Yours In Murder.